Recently I got into papercrafting after seeing the really inspiring Princess Zelda life size model. Drawing from my cardboard display experience, I thought it shouldn’t be too difficult but rather more time consuming since it all required manual labour. So I decided to take the challenge and secretly build a Starcraft battlecruiser for chibi =). I gave myself 1 week for this project as I couldn’t take the risk having chibi enter my room because I knew I was gona make a big mess and she’d find out for sure! So off to work I go and there wasn’t a single minute to waste.

I’ve chosen to show a WIP of the mini canons as the entry would otherwise be too long.

First I obviously needed to print out the template on paper, I’ve selected 160gsm which I thought was a good thickness as it gave descent strength whilst not being too difficult for the smaller pieces (as shown above). Cutting really is a pain, full concentration is required because one wrong cut could mean you have to start the piece all over again.

Here’s the first piece which I’ve cut almost perfectly.

Crease it, fold it, glue it and we now have a 3D geometrical object. This would have taken roughly 10 minutes. Doesn’t seem too bad you say?

Then move on to the next piece! cut cut and cut

crease, crease and crease…

Glue, glue and glue…

And next piece…

And next piece…Some pieces are so small that it requires extra attention. Take the one above for example, the piece was so small which made it hard to grip with my fingers. Tweezers can be really helpful in this instance.

Phew…now that we’ve got all our pieces we can assemble it into our mini canon!

And here it is, our first mini 3D canon made from paper! =D This took about 40 minutes.

Now we just need to do this 7 more times ^^”

And here we have all the assembled pieces. Getting to this point was the most satisfying because the fun part starts now! All we need to do now is to connect them all together like a 4 year old’s toy.

So there you have it, the completed Battlecruiser. All up this took about 40 hours of work but the end result is something that I can be really proud of. The hardest part of this project was not the cutting, creasing or gluing, but patience, sometimes you’d have to do the same piece over and over which becomes really tedious. You just have to be patient and grind through it. Overall I was really happy with the end result and glad I finished just in time to give to chibi. Now the battlecruiser rests peacefully on her desk overlooking her destroying it’s allies in Heart of the Swarm >D.

Amazing stuff… the worst part for me is the gluing. If you use normal Elmer’s glue, you will have to hold the two surfaces together until the glue dries enough. Being a perfectionist, I always wait for the glue to dry.

It was because of this that I never completed the Gundam SD papercraft I was doing : P

Now that I have a semi-decent glue gun, I can try again… but since I have Heart of the Swarm, it’s only proper that I get a Battlecruiser out … my son loves it so much.